Perch of the Devil

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

She had entered into a deliberate partnership with a man who protected and supported her, and she would keep the letter, far as its spirit might be beyond the reach of her will. Even were she to become financially independent, it was doubtful if she would leave him for a long period; and for New York and its social diversions she cared not at all. What she wanted was adventure—she stumbled on the word, and stopped with a gasp. Adventure. For the first time she wished she were a man. She would pack two mules with a prospector’s outfit and disappear into the mountains.

She swung her mind to the Russian grammar, enough to impale it in the death agony; but when she had entered her home, and, after a visit to her leisurely cook, who was a unionized socialist, ascended to her bedroom and stood before her mirror, she decided that it was her singular interview with the wife of Gregory Compton that had thrown her mind off its delicate balance. She recalled that Mrs. Compton—certainly an interesting creature in spite of her appalling commonness—had told her flagrantly that she was young, pretty, and attractive to men, even as are young and pretty women without too much brains. The compliment—or was it the suggestion?—had thrilled her, and it thrilled her again. Men sometimes had tried to make love to her, but she had ascribed such charm as she appeared to possess to the automatically vibrating magnet of youth; and although she had never been above a passing flirtation, either in her mother’s salon or in Butte, she merely had been bored if the party of the other part had taken his courage in his hands on the morrow. Scruples did not trouble her. The American woman, she would have reasoned, is traditionally “cold.” American men, brought up on her code of ethics, are able to take care of themselves.

Had she been superficial in her conclusions? Could she attract men more potently than by a merely girlish charm and a vivacious mind? Her memory ran rapidly over the functions of the winter, particularly the dinners and dances. She could not recall a passing conquest. She was angry to feel herself shiver, but she jerked off her hat, and the pins out of her fine abundant hair. She was twenty-six. Had she gone off? Faded? She never had been called a beauty, never had had the vanity to think herself a beauty, but she remembered that sometimes in an animated company she had glanced into the passing mirror and thought herself quite pretty, with her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. But normally she was too washed-out for beauty, however good her features might be, and of course she had no figure at all. She dressed well from force of habit, and she had the carriage at least to set off smartly cut garments, but as much might be said of a dressmaker’s “form.”

And her skin was sallow and sunburned and weather-beaten and dry, as any neglected skin in a high altitude is sure to be. Once it had been as white as her native snows. Her hair, also the victim of the high dry air, and exposed to the elements for hours together, was more colourless than Nature had made it—dull—dead. She held out a strand in dismay, remembering how her cendré hair had been admired in Paris; then with a sudden sense of relief (it escaped from the cellar where her ego was immured on bread and water) she informed herself that it was her duty to invoke the services of Miss Ruby Miller. No woman with proper pride—or self-respect—would let her skin go to pot, no, not at any age; certainly not at twenty-six. She recalled an impulsive remark of Miss Miller’s a few months since when arranging her hair for a fancy-dress ball, and gave another sigh—of hope.

So does Nature avenge herself.

X

SHE heard her husband’s voice as he entered the house, and hastily changed her walking suit for one of the soft tea gowns she wore when they were alone. This was a simple thing of a Copenhagen-blue silk, with a guimpe of fine white net, and trimmed about the neck and half sleeves with the newest and softest of the year’s laces. She noticed with some satisfaction that her neck, below the collar line, was very white; and she suddenly covered the rest of it with powder, then rubbed the puff over her face. It was ordinary “baby powder” for the bath, for she never had indulged in toilet accessories, but it answered its purpose, if only to demonstrate what she might have been had she safeguarded the gifts of nature. And the dull blue gown was suddenly becoming.

Her husband, who had spent the intervening time in the library, ran upstairs whistling in spite of his girth—he was the lightest dancer in Butte—and knocked on her door before going to his own room.

“Say,” he said, as he chucked her under the chin, and kissed her maritally, “but you look all right. Run down stairs and hold your breath until I’ve made myself beautiful. I’ve got big news for you.”

She rustled softly down the stair, wondering what the news might be, but not unduly interested. Mark was always excited over his new cases. Perhaps he had been retained by Amalgamated. She hoped so. He deserved it, for he worked harder than anyone knew. And she liked him sincerely, quite without mitigation now that the years had taught him the folly of being in love with her.